Aug 13 – Chinaccelerator Daily Digest: Five Headlines You Need to Know
1 Huawei, Kunlun and China’s tech giants drive a quiet revolution in Africa’s fintech with mobile payment apps and wallets. Africa’s big mobile wallets M-Pesa, established by Kenyan phone company Safaricom, uses Huawei’s enterprise solution. SCMP
2 TikTok announced stricter privacy controls to protect 13-17 year old teenagers from hidden advertising and inappropriate content. New users aged 16 to 17 will have their Direct Message setting be set to “No One” by default. TechCrunch
3 China technology policy change: Beijing is set to roll back tax incentives for software companies in favor of hard tech R&D. First move is to levy higher tax on internet companies and tighten qualification standard for ‘key software enterprises’ to reduce chances for tax reduction. SCMP
4 China Mobile profit rises 6% year on year due to robust growth in 5G users for the first half of 2021. This large state-owned telecommunications company acquired 3.6 million new users in the first half, bouncing back from the last year when it lost 8 million subscribers as China allowed users to switch carriers with their old phone numbers. Technode